Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is launching its first broadcast sponsorship of a new Channel 4 ‘Adventure on 4’ programming strand. The Channel 4 sponsorship starting on 9th April 2009 is a six figure sponsorship lasting 12 months.

The sponsorship includes sponsorship bumpers – usually 15” openers, 5” bumpers and 10” closing sequence(s) around the Adventure programming including ‘Around the word in 80 trades’, ‘Deadliest Catch’, ‘Daredevils’, and ‘Into The Wild’.

The sponsorship includes Channel 4’s online video-on-demand service with pre-roll and mid-roll sponsorship bumpers played during every stream.

TV advertising, in particular sponsorships, allow advertisers to directly relate their products to a relevant environment and target market. This association with the programming allows for further social or lifestyle targeting albeit aspirational or just simply correct demographic targeting. This affiliation allows the creative to target in on the consumer and create a commercial or ‘idents’ that play on the fantasy imposed by the programming.

Sponsorship allows for the targeting of correct demographics in the right frame of mind, at high frequency. This frequency within a single programme allows for campaign ‘opportunities to see’ to be higher and in the case of multi-channel homes allows for niche targeting with high impact. As a rule of thumb; Multi-channel sponsorship allows for cost effective, high frequency and well targeted campaigns. Terrestrial channels allow for mass marketed high frequency campaigns.

Do you think that sponsorship can be effective as part of the media mix?

TV Advertising agency Improve Marketing https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/tv-advertising

Magazines births and closures

Following on from the closure of Arena magazine Maxim is the latest casualty in the Men’s Lifestyle market.

Maxim’s circulation has been in free fall for many years, along with most of the other titles in this sector! Maxim’s fall from grace illustrates a collapse in the lad’s mag marketplace.
With circulation high’s in excess of 350,000 Maxim has fizzled out and publishes its last issue in May (cover dated June). The magazine will continue to be published in the US and some of these copies may end up in British stores but for now Maxim UK will only be available online.

The Men’s market has been undergoing many changes for a long while now. Originally dominated by the big monthlies, changes have been made. Instead of monthly titles such as Loaded and FHM, IPC and Bauer (formally EMAP), launched the weekly Nuts and Zoo titles to try and invigorate this sector yet again, but unfortunately for both publishers the weeklies simply cannabalised their own monthly circulations and the rot started to set in.
FHM formally circulating in excess of 750,000 copies per month has lost nearly half a million copies and now circulates 270,000 copies per month, although still a strong circulation how long will this last? Now the market is dominated by the freely distributed titles such as Shortlist and Sport yet another tactic and possibly the future for failing national newspapers.

Whilst people still continue to enjoy the feel of real magazines, Dennis publishing has invested heavily in it’s online offerings. Not only is Maxim now being published online but this move has probably been encouraged by the success of Monkey magazine that now has an ABCe audited figure of 1,009,298 users per issue.

So its farewell to Maxim and Arena, but Adman suspects that their will be some more high profile closures in the coming months.

Which titles do you think won’t survive the next year?

Looking for an advertising agency to guide you through the media maze? Check out https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/advertising-agency

Channel 4 - Volkswagen Commercial Sponsorship

Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is launching its first broadcast sponsorship of a new Channel 4 ‘Adventure on 4’ programming strand. The Channel 4 sponsorship starting on 9th April 2009 is a six figure sponsorship lasting 12 months.

The sponsorship includes sponsorship bumpers – usually 15” openers, 5” bumpers and 10” closing sequence(s) around the Adventure programming including ‘Around the word in 80 trades’, ‘Deadliest Catch’, ‘Daredevils’, and ‘Into The Wild’.

The sponsorship includes Channel 4’s online video-on-demand service with pre-roll and mid-roll sponsorship bumpers played during every stream.

TV advertising, in particular sponsorships, allow advertisers to directly relate their products to a relevant environment and target market. This association with the programming allows for further social or lifestyle targeting albeit aspirational or just simply correct demographic targeting. This affiliation allows the creative to target in on the consumer and create a commercial or ‘idents’ that play on the fantasy imposed by the programming.

Sponsorship allows for the targeting of correct demographics in the right frame of mind, at high frequency. This frequency within a single programme allows for campaign ‘opportunities to see’ to be higher and in the case of multi-channel homes allows for niche targeting with high impact. As a rule of thumb; Multi-channel sponsorship allows for cost effective, high frequency and well targeted campaigns. Terrestrial channels allow for mass marketed high frequency campaigns.

Do you think that sponsorship can be effective as part of the media mix?

Looking for your own sponsorship on TV?

Check out Improve Marketing has TV Advertising buying services https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/tv-advertising

Media owner insight - CBS Outdoor

CBS Outdoor is an outdoor media provider who sell many formats of outdoor media from Buses to Railway. Other outdoor providers such as Maiden, Primesite and Clear Channel compete for the rest of the countries sheetage and each have their own specialist fields e.g. Roadside 48 sheets. In this case CBS is predominately responsible for transport and the traditional and digital formats that are available with them. CBS has been responsible for the whole scale changes that you may have seen in the London Underground bringing the advertising medium up into the 21st century. Cutting-edge digital innovations such as the Cross track projections (known as XTP’s) through to highly creative escalator panels, CBS puts the excitement back into Outdoor. CBS also sells other outdoor formats as well as the London Underground including National Rail, Docklands Light Railway and Trams and Buses, which again due to innovation and forethought it continues to evolve with the new single decker superside bus which is currently being tested in York. The reason and most importantly the finance for these whole scale changes is due to CBS retaining the single largest (£) outdoor contract in the World, the London underground. The new formats are already installed in the major stations and can be bought individually or as part of the premium Pearl packages. For more information on CBS and its outdoor formats go to http://www.cbsoutdoor.co.uk/.

Looking for a media planning agency to buy Outdoor?

See https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/media-planning

Media Agencies - the right choice?

Agency – Up until recently it had been reported that media agencies or an agency that specialises in media planning and buying only, were being made redundant by the larger full service agencies. Press reports claimed that the media agency ‘is dead’ and that their position within the market ‘is now deemed irrelevant’..

Financial conditions as they are, the media agency has even more importance than ever. Whilst creative agencies still try to cost their work as if each piece deserved to be auctioned at Sotheby’s, and media owners still rely on trading from rate card with traditional discounts, the media agency(s) are the only industry faction that have truly cemented their place as realists within an industry haemorrhaging funds with each and every ‘tap tap’ of the Financial Directors calculator!

Business’s desperately need more and more accountable and cost effective media, the people with the most access to this are the agencies that prepared for it many years ago. Agencies that buy the full range of media from Television to Inserts, with a range of client strategies; from Direct Response to Branding, who haven’t relied upon the fact that the old media marketplace was a safe market that would never change.

The successful agencies will be the early embracers of digital media, and they will not only survive the harsh market conditions, but thrive!

The good media agency by now has an established and experienced digital team that is up to date with the likes of social, mobile and content marketing. They are acutely aware of the shifting market and how to take advantage of it. Media that was possibly too expensive to clients before may now be within reach, media that wasn’t created before is now a necessity. With sound and calculated choices financial downturns are the perfect times to promote growth. Advertisers who continue to advertise whilst relying on innovative and informed agencies will emerge on the other side of this shrinking market lean, mean and even more keen to promote their wares and services.

The market will still provide challenges to media agencies and without doubt there will be a decline in numbers as late adopters try to catch up and advertisers choose not to spend, however, whilst marketers and business’s as a whole need even more competitively priced media and even greater ROI, the remaining media agencies will prosper and become even more important in the advertising arena.

Do you think that media agencies are better placed to survive a financial downturn?

Looking for a media buying agency? Check out https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/media-buying

Mobile Media: Have you got the signal?

Digital Media - Mobile media is internet consumed via a mobile phone or PDA device. The domain name that is used on the mobile web is .mobi. This domain name is the top rated or first searched by mobile search engines.

Mobile media has exploded onto the web and is now the new buzz word in digital departments all over the country. Advertisers are slowly waking up to the .mobi revolution but have you got your website mobile friendly?

Today survey results published by Orange revealed that people are interacting with mobile media much more readily than before, here are some quick stats:

The survey data was collected 2,000 mobile phone media users using all five UK mobile networks.

1) Four out of five mobile media users access mobile media once a week
2) 70% of consumers are attracted to interactive mobile marketing formats (sponsorship or picture messaging)
3) 47% of participants prefer to click on ads because they go straight through to a brand's website
4) 43% prefer to click on voucher codes or coupons
5) The average age for mobile media users is 36
6) 81% of those polled use mobile media more than once a week
7) 46% use mobile media daily
8) Mobile internet pages viewed most often are search engines, e-mail, news, music and film
9) 55% of people browse mobile internet with no specific agenda.

Have you bought your .mobi domain name? Have you made your website mobile friendly?

Do you believe that .mobi is a fad and or technology will soon catch up?

Looking for some help with your mobile marketing? Check out https://www.internetmarketingstrategy.co.uk/mobile

Survival of the fittest - Northcliffe

Regional Press - Northcliffe newspapers (Daily Mail’s or DMGT’s regional newspaper division) has again announced that it needs to make savings in the form of job cuts.

Northcliffe who own over 100 regional newspapers including Derby Telegraph, Kent and Sussex Courier and the Leicester Mercury are said to be looking to reduce their staffing numbers by a further 1000. The regional newspaper division has already streamlined its sales teams and moved the national sales responsibilities to Mediaforce. A small amount of the sales team were repatriated into the Mediaforce set up and the remaining were made redundant.

After recent government calls to back local media – from a junior culture minister who clearly doesn’t know the amount of wasted budget that has been ploughed into over priced regional press – where does the future lie for the big publishers?

Northcliffe are responding to a 37% downturn in ad revenues – a swing like that would cause any publisher to react - but is this a case of the publisher cannibalising its own readership?

Specific sections such as the Motors, Property and above all the Recruitment have always been reliable generators of revenue, the bread and butter sections that made regional titles profitable. In the case of Northcliffe they have created far more accountable and responsive media in their own online brand extensions.

DMGT Brand extensions:
Property section – FindaProperty.com
Recruitment section – Jobsite.co.uk
Motors section - Motors.co.uk

Aside of the recession, which is obviously speeding up the process, are regional publishers by providing superior online alternatives to the traditional classified sections and supplements hastening their own end or keeping up with the times..

Or are they falling victim to media Darwinism?

Do you think that regional press has a future in its current format?

Get in-depth analysis on media from https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/media-reporting

T Mobile Dance TV Commercial

Television: T Mobile Dance TV Commercial - I love it!

Apart from the fact that the commercial itself was very entertaining, the creative technique and message deployment used was so simple and bang on!

One morning a ‘creative type’, woke up pondering the question.. How do I get to practice my directorial skills on a feature length commercial? How can I blow my entire creative budget in a single sitting?? How can I get the Joe Bloggs public to use their phones whilst I film them???

One of the first airings of the ad was during the persistently popular Celebrity Big Brother. The commercial swallowed the whole ad break (3 minutes excluding the sponsorship bumpers), ballsy move and a nightmare for Channel 4 who had to explain to their other prime time advertisers that one of their key - peak ad breaks had been monopolised by a single advertiser!

TV media buying from https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/tv-advertising

Following the same strategies that David Attenborough employs whilst watching Antelope, they knew that every person in that station even on a cold January morning, would get their phones out in order to share what they were witnessing. This was nothing short of genius. Not during the whole commercial is there a mention of T Mobile, not until the end of the feature, when the viewer has already become one of the spectators and who is practically filming their TV through their own phone.

The dying seconds finally give up the advertiser and the catch line that you had been fooled into thinking was your own idea is revealed (accompanied by the acoustic logo of course) – Life’s for sharing..... Great ad!

Share your thoughts on this commercial.

To Audit or not to Audit?

Magazines – What is a title worth if you can’t absolutely confirm its circulation? Trade Press and more and more often consumer press are choosing not to carry true audited circulations. The reason for this is very simple, they have a circulation much lower than they quote and / or their distribution methods are unsatisfactory! Magazines that do not have the official audits by recognised auditing bodies;

ABC (Audited bureau of circulation) for Paid for titles
VFD (Verified Free Distribution) for Free titles

… Simply can not be costed the same as a properly audited magazine. Agencies and some clients will simply not choose to advertise within them, however do they have a value?

If you do have to purchase space within a market sector that has no or very few audited titles there is a few safe guards that can help you to make your choice. Firstly make sure that you see copies of the magazines, check for quality not only of the paper stock (free titles will always be a lighter stock than paid for), but for editorial and advertiser quality. If the editorial looks like it is simply a collection of press releases and some badly put together ad’s, discard it immediately. If on the other hand, there’s some recognisable competitors and quality, relevant stories then it may be worth a test. Calculate the cost per thousand (negotiated not rate card!) of the largest similar audited title reduce this CPT by 50% and offer a minimum of a page with a strong trackable direct response mechanism – if you believe that you could get a good gauge of response from a single ad then go ahead but I would always recommend a run of three to truly check the responsiveness of any title.

If the circulation is not ABC’d or VFD’d and instead has a PS (Publishers Statement) or IA (Independent Audit) I would say BS (;-) if the cost of the advertisement was not in line with this dubious lack of information.

Do you think that non-audited media is to risky to give advertising budget too?

Media buying agency https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/media-buying

Where's my channel gone?

Television: UKTV - UKTV the broadcasters of UKTV network (part owned by the BBC and sold by IDS) has now succesfully completed the re-brand to half of its channels.

In case you find it confusing, I know I did in the beginning...

Eden (formally UKTV Documentary),
Yesterday (formally UKTV History),
Alibi (formally UKTV Documentary)
Blighty (UKTV People)

… now join the likes of Dave (formally UKTV G2) and Watch (formally UKTV Gold).



UKTV Style, UKTV Gardens and UKTV Food remain the same.. For now!

The idents were believed to be changed after the G2 – Dave transfer shot Dave into the top 5 - in terms of audience delivery (all adults) – within Multi channel homes. Coupled with the fact that it delivers many very lucrative 16 – 34 Men ratings, it probably sponsored the whole very confusing re-brand.

The remaining channels are expected to follow suit later in the year.

What do you think about the re-brand?

Looking for a Advertising agency? Click Improve Marketing Advertising Agency